


In the Blood, in the Heart

by 221b_hound



Series: Triptych [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fatherhood, Multi, Parenthood, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:39:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6096256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes had once claimed that he understood love. That it was a chemical defect, chiefly suffered by the losing side. What an idiot. Watching his daughters sleep, he contemplates the infinite nature of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Blood, in the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Life's been too busy of late, and will stay that way for a while, but I'll write and update when I get the chance.

Sherlock lay on the bed next to his sleeping three-year-old and watching his newborn, herself fast asleep in the bassinet beside the bed. He was contemplating a puzzle.

He’d once claimed that he understood love. That it was a chemical defect, chiefly suffered by the losing side.

What an idiot.

The thing he currently found most elusive and curious, in the deeply curious and frustratingly elusive business of being human, was the infinite nature of love.

Five years ago he had loved John Watson with his whole heart, even if he hadn’t the first idea what to do with that feeling.

Four years ago, he had fallen in love with Mary Morstan and loved her with his whole heart, without loving John Watson any less because of it.

Three and a half years ago, Ada Lily was born, and he loved her, too, with his whole heart, without one whit diminishing his love for John and Mary.

Now Mae Joy Holmes Watson Morstan - two weeks old and looking like a pale grub with a shock of black hair – had performed the same trick. He loved her with his whole heart, which was also fully dedicated to Ada, to John, to Mary.

 _How is it always more and never less? How can some people go a whole life without anything in their heart at all_ – Magnussen sprang instantly to mind – _when mine is apparently borrowing space from alternative dimensions in order to house all the love that keeps bursting into flower in here?_

Sherlock snorted derision at his own ridiculous fancies, chuffing air over Ada’s shoulders. She wriggled and pulled a face that was reminiscent of John’s when he was sleepy and disgruntled, and Sherlock had the very weird experience of feeling his love for her _expand_ – not taking up more room really so much as just making his heart bigger.

Sherlock placed his hand over her back and shushed her softly, and his daughter sighed back into sleep.

His daughter.

In the bassinet, Mae sighed too, and with his warm palm still on Ada’s back, he looked up at Mae’s scrunched eyes and little rosebud mouth.

His _daughters_.

More strange alchemy, there.

Sherlock Holmes had made a career, a whole life, out of looking for discrepancies, watching for the breaks in the patterns that revealed where things didn’t fit. But when he looked at his daughters, he saw only the things that bound their family together. Ada’s genes were Morstan-Watson, but she tilted her head exactly the way Sherlock did when she was cross-examining her toys. She threw her arms wide when declaiming (and she was definitely declamatory) exactly the way he did. Ada’s genes were not his, but he was nevertheless present in her.

He couldn’t wait to see how Mae would reveal John through her Morstan-Holmes DNA.

The baby’s hand twitched in her sleep and Sherlock watched her subside again, her chubby little limbs splayed. His spice insisted he slept like that if he got to bed first, all starfished on the bed, though he always woke up less a starfish and more an octopus, John snugged in close on one side, Mary on the other. Sometimes he slept on the outside and managed to sprawl over the two of them, apparently in his sleep insisting on touching both of them.

The world outside their little family didn’t get it. People not close to them seemed to think that John and Mary, in saint-like fashion, let their weird friend stay with them and put up with his peculiarities out of some misplaced sense of charity. Despite the fact that they all three wore rings. Despite the fact that – when not working – they all three held hands and expressed public affection and _for fuck’s sake_ acted like three people in love to a degree where he might have been embarrassed if he hadn’t been so damned contented. _God_ , people were stupid.

But here was Mae Joy Holmes Watson Morstan. With the Holmesian crown of curly dark hair and the pale skin, and those cupid’s bow lips. If people couldn’t see how his role as a father was expressed in the _nurture_ part of Ada Lily, then they’d at least see the _nature_ of his role in Mae Joy, and see that he _belonged_ here.

He never much cared what other people thought, and yet in the last two weeks he had felt a solid warmth take up residence in that expanding heart of his, and deep in his brain, that here was _evidence_. He and Mary and John and Ada and Mae were all five of them a family, belonging together, fitting together. Perfect. Together.

Sherlock brushed his nose against Ada’s cheek, then kissed her hair. He rose from the bed slowly, so he wouldn’t disturb her, then went to Mae to stroke his finger down her arm to her hand. Her tiny fingers flexed against his skin.

There went his heart, expanding again. At this rate, it would extend from Marylebone to the Sussex Downs by the end of the month, defying logic, physics and chemistry with how much he could love his family both individually and collectively with his whole heart. His whole mind. Every blood vessel. Every breath.

‘Hey.’

Sherlock tore his eyes away from Mae and Ada at John’s soft greeting from the doorway.

‘Mary had an idea,’ continued John softly. ‘If you felt like it.’

Sherlock read his husband. The slight, eager shift of his feet, his hands held relaxed at his sides, palms out – a prelude to invitation but no pressure. John’s tongue darting out to lick his lower lip. The crooked smile. A certain confidence.

Late pregnancy and the birth had been hard on Mary. She was still recovering from the caesarean, but Mary Morstan had survived worse things than a difficult birth, with less help, and this time she had two very smart husbands to assist in her recuperation.

And right now she had an idea. Mary always had such _excellent_ ideas.

Sherlock crossed the room to caress John’s jaw; to kiss him. ‘Yes,’ he breathed.

John checked that the baby monitor was on, then took Sherlock’s hand. They left the downstairs bedroom, closed the door, and, arms around each other’s waists, they walked upstairs to Mary and her excellent idea.

**Author's Note:**

> Mae Joy is named for Mae Jemison (dancer/doctor/scientist) and Vanessa-Mae (violinist) - and of course, for Joy.
> 
> I have some more little stories in this Johnlockary series that came about because of the Million Word Festival. (The next one will explore Mary's excellent idea...)


End file.
